Realization
by Kyoui-chan
Summary: They’re trying to figure out why we would dress like that, and sometimes they are scared because they can’t.  [AU, Goth!Sasuke, references to ItaSasu]


It occurs to me for no good reason, as I stand there in the hall of the house. The linoleum is white under my feet and the washing machine is white and I stand there in my black and am suddenly hit by the fact that in some house far away there is one of the many people that stare because I wear that black, because my eyes are darkly lined and sometimes my lips painted black. There is one of those people and they are sitting there perhaps playing video games or making food because it's past lunchtime but I haven't eaten anyway (what's the point?).

Or maybe they're doing the same thing I am, pulling these sheets out of the washing machine, clean now of most of the blood and... other things that stained them. Here in my house, hyper-aware of my own body slim and shaped in unornamented black. In my house, the one with me and my parents and my strange, perhaps psychotic older brother. And the floor is white and the washing machine is white and the cupboards are wood and my parents are blue and white and red and _color_ but my brother is black like I am. Our hair is black and his eyes are red but they have black in them and he doesn't wear as much of the freaky makeup or near as much of the ornaments that I do but people sometimes stare at him even more than me.

They're trying to figure out so many things about us just from our appearance. They're trying to figure out whether we are girls or boys and it's just made worse by my makeup and his long hair and they're trying to figure out whether those are contacts because they think they _have_ to be, because red is just not a normal eye color. They're trying to figure out _why_ we would dress like that, and sometimes they are scared because they can't. Can't comprehend the beauty of the pale and the black and the silver and the more black.

Even in our own house there is that incomprehension. They've started ignoring us. He tries to ignore me, but I make him notice. I can't stand to just _be._ To be normal, to blend in, to get along with society. When I wear black and mesh and spikes and silver jewelry they notice. They know, they assume that I'm different. Because I am. I _want_ to be. I _want_ the attention, I revel in the negativity. I want his attention even more. Even if it is strange, wrong, so different. There is a thing called incest; it is generally considered 'forbidden.' I don't understand what's so bad about it. There doesn't seem to be anything all that horrible, from my point of view. It's different from everybody else. He won't flaunt it, but I notice that he doesn't stop me when I hang onto his arm or waist when we're out. Maybe people just assume that we're close siblings. Or not siblings.

I don't understand that, because we look almost exactly alike. He looks a lot older, and has red eyes and paler skin because while I rarely go outdoors, he literally almost _never_ goes outside. It makes him look fragile, delicate. I like to see him fragile. It makes me feel like for once, I might actually have a chance of being better at him than something (even if it is only the ability to get a tan). But other than that, we could be twins. Our hair is the same shade of not-quite-midnight black. Our faces look almost alike. We're built virtually the same way.

But he is isolated and burning and I can't get close because he pushes away, so far away. It is this one thing I want that I can't get, and I think sometimes that perhaps he is the same, so much the same, he wants to be different, to be noticed, wants so _bad_ and knows it, because there's no way he doesn't know something about himself that even I've noticed. He wants to make his mark, he wants to fly so high into the ranks of humanity that even when he's gone he'll be remembered. It's not enough for him to be noticed, to be talked about by the people close to him.

For me, though, it's enough. This world is bigger than it feels when I'm at home, because here the washing machine is white and the sheets are wet and tangled in my hands but out there, even in a smaller town, the number of people (it seems so small as just a number) is actually vast. There are people at the mall, at the park, at the grocery store, and even at school, and they gawk and I don't care because I'll never see them again. Let them look.

The house is white and blue and wood and the carpet is gray as I go down the steps to the dryer with my load and I am the only black that stands out, a pale slim shadow among the clean and the bright. And somewhere there is someone else doing something else, and he isn't thinking of me or my strangeness or the fact that the sheets will probably need to be cleaned again tomorrow, but it'll be Itachi's turn this time and I won't have to worry. He's living his own life and I wonder what he's thinking, but I will never know because even through the acute sense that I _know_ he exists, I don't know him.

Probably don't want to, anyway.

o.O.o.0.o.O.o.0.o.O.o

Forgive this strangeness, for it was written randomly and in maybe fifteen minute's actual writing time...


End file.
